Legislative leaders don’t see casinos in budget (update)

The state’s top lawmakers said they were skeptical that legislation guiding the siting of several new casinos would be included in the state budget, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proposed.

“That’s another issue. We don’t need to have that gaming issue. It’s not time-sensitive right now, in my opinion,” Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos said Monday after a closed door meeting with the governor. “The budget is time sensitive.”

Cuomo is pushing for an amendment to the state constitution that would allow up to seven casinos, but has said that he wants to restrict initial development to three new gaming parlors north of Putnam County, with proposals judged by a new Gaming Commission that he would control.

Cuomo included language outlining these constraints in the $136.5 billion spending plan he proposed in January, which lawmakers are tweaking ahead of a March 31 deadline. State law gives the governor a strong hand in budget negotiations, and many political observers consider it to be a major point of leverage over legislators.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, agreed with Skelos, saying casinos are “not part of the budget right now.”

Cuomo rejected these comments as “speculative conversations.”

“We’re working toward an on-time budget, and it was a fairly uneventful meeting,” Cuomo said. “There’s nothing in, there’s nothing out until you have a budget.”

Cuomo said it would not matter if the language dropped out of the budget and was considered later in the legislative session, which is scheduled to wrap up in June.

Update: In an email, Silver’s spokesman Michael Whyland echoes Cuomo by saying, “nothing has been decided about what is in or out of the budget.”